


The Width of a Circle

by BakerStreetMuse



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant?, Case Fic, Historical AU, Holiday Fic Exchange, I hope you enjoy it, M/M, for christmas i have brought you the gift of ??????, one of those fics where will is dreaming...OR IS HE?!?!?!, science/magic?, this kind of escaped, typical hannibal violence and gore, warning for fuckballls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 09:58:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BakerStreetMuse/pseuds/BakerStreetMuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As he pursues the Minnesota Shrike Will Graham finds himself caught between two realities, an array of impossible coincidences, and two very different men with the same face and name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Width of a Circle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [finangler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/finangler/gifts).



 

 

  
**ACT ONE**

_Open your eyes_

Will would, gladly, were he not so tired.  

_Open your eyes_

He sleeps so seldom and seldomly so well. The voice is cruel, though soft and imploring. It doesn’t care if he breaks apart entirely due lack of rest, his mind spinning in circles desperately seeking traction. It gropes after something decidedly un-nightmarish, scratching uselessly against ice.  

_My darling, please._

Now that bore further investigation. Undoubtedly. Never once in his adult life had anyone called him ‘darling’. Growing up all across the south, he’d heard it day in and day out: 

‘I’ll have the cook fix it for you, darlin.’ 

‘That’ll be $4.50, darlin.’ 

‘Why thank you darlin!’ 

‘You look lost darlin, you ok?‘   

But it was always drawled with a casual affection and never spoken so desperately. 

_Oh god!_

Will wonders when the last time he had slept was, the last time he had dreamed. He dreamt of blood and screams and twisted flesh. He rarely felt so weightless. 

_Will...darling....please..._

A smooth voice. Heavily accented with something implacable. A man’s voice?      

“What?”          

“Thank god!”       

Will hazards opening one eye and finds the light blinding and painful.   

He feels kisses pressed to his eyelids, his forehead, his cheeks, his gaping mouth, so quickly that he hasn’t the time to react. And that’s when he finally puts a name to the murmuring voice and soft lips.  

“Hannibal...?”   

“Ssssh darling, we must get out of here. You’ve given quite a bit better than you’ve received, I’m afraid.”       

And suddenly will can smell blood, and its a familiar as it is viscerally horrifying. The scent provides him with a full body jolt, adrenaline pumping, as he springs to life and nearly collapses,  the only thing coming between him and the ground is Hannibal.    

“Take my arm, darling, I’ve hailed a hansom cab.” Will blindly reaches out in some direction or other, the world swirling as he’s maneuvered on legs that refuse to work.      

“Handsome cab?” Asks Will. “What?” Out of the corner of his eye he thinks he sees the foot of a man in a black shoe, bent at an odd angle, and twitching. There’s blood on dirty stone.        

“I suppose one could describe Charlot that way if one were feeling generous.” Will cannot see the wry twist of Hannibal’s lips.      

Suddenly Will  can smell horse shit, overwhelming and foul. He thinks he’s going to be sick. He cannot appreciate the fine grey tweed of his frock coat, the crisp whiteness of his shirtsleeves speckled red with blood, the rings on his fine boned hands, though he can feel the chill of them disturbing the burning heat of the man’s hands.    

“My name is Will Graham.” He says as he is moved toward the hansom cab, helmed by a creole youth dressed in a yellow waistcoat and dingy shirtsleeves and trousers.  

“It is 3:23 am.” 

“Help me, Charlot. Master Graham is quite intoxicated.”    

“Yeas Monsieur, that ‘splains the pile-uh dead, yeas?”   

“I am in Wolf Trap...” 

“Wha yo fink he in Wolf Tra fo?”    

“...Virginia.” He finishes as Hannibal picks him up under the arms and attempts to maneuver him into the hansom cab and only succeeds in bashing his head against the side of it.    

* * *

Will opens his eyes and turns to look at his alarm clock just as 3:23 blinks into 3:24. He feels the  sharp turn of his stomach and know what’s coming. With an internal curse, as he’s afraid to open his mouth before reaching the toilet, he sprints from his bed to his bathroom. He falls on his knees beside the toilet, pain radiating up his femurs as his knees crash against the toilet. The pain seems to shock his stomach out of trying to climb up his esophagus, and he lets out a breath as his cheek rests against the cool toilet seat.  

“Fuck.” Moans will. His body is shaking.   

_Open your eyes._

He knows that voice, knew the name of the speaker once, but he can’t remember it. Him.    

Will thinks of the brush of soft lips against his cheeks and chin and shakes his head back and forth, as if it will chaste the ghosts of imagined sensation away. He knows he has to be up for work in a few hours. What are they even covering in his class today?  He thinks and thinks, gunshots and sheets of his lesson plan and screeches flashing behind his eyes and expanding outward, contracting and stretching to become and encompass his universe as a pendulum swings with his mind, in time with the gravity of his pounding heart.   

A brunette woman lays on the floor at his feet, he’s shot her in the neck and her eyes flash with fear as he holds a smart phone in one hand and her home phone in the other.  

“This is DDT Security. Who am I speaking with?” Comes out of the phone, a professional and appropriately concerned and professionally invested voice. Will presses his smart phone to the receiver, selecting a short little recording with the press of a button.    

“Theresa Marlow.” Plays into the receiver and while the actual Theresa Marlow has been paralyzed by the shot in her neck, Will swears he hears her let out a little desperate release of petrified air. 

“Can you please confirm your password for security purposes?”     

Will presses another button on his smart phone.  

“Tea kettle.” Plays. 

“Thank you, Mrs. Marlow. We detected a front door alarm.”  

Another button. “Yes, that was me. That was my fault. Sorry about that.”

“Is there anyone in the house with you at this time, Mrs. Marlow?” 

Another button.  “I’m just here with my husband. It’s all good. We’re good.” 

Mr. Marlow lays dead on the stairs, his blood dripping down them in rivulets like red fingers pulled toward the earth. 

“Do you require any further assistance at this time?” 

“No. Thank you so much for calling. Sorry about the false alarm.”   

As Will returns to his bathroom, head pressed against the toilet seat, now dripping with his own sweat, visions of rent flesh drip and ooze behind his eyes.         

Theresa Marlow had been tortured.   

_Open your eyes_

Will hears the calm accented voice and shudders even as his agony bleeds away. 

* * *

“Everyone has thought about killing someone one way or another. Be it your own hands or the hand of God. Now think about killing Mrs. Marlow.” Will Graham says from behind the podium at 11:45 am. He surveys his class, the most recent batch of trainees at the FBI Academy, flickering his gaze briefly at the tips of their eyelashes and ears and foreheads, nervously skirting their eyes before continuing onward. Out of his peripheral vision he catches a flash of a large man in a suit, waiting to speak with him when his lecture concludes. He frowns before he can stop himself. “Why did she deserve this? Tell me your design. Tell me who you are.” With that he sort of vaguely waves his hands in a gesture which really means nothing, but the trainees have learned conveys that they are free to go.     

Will is oblivious to their gazes, some lustful and others faintly interested around the edges, as they file out and leave him to nervously fiddle with the files at his podium as the unwanted visitor draws closer. He puts on a pair of glasses, a strategic defense against direct eye contact. Will recognizes him as Jack Crawford immediately.    

“Mr. Graham.” The man holds out his hand. “I’m Special Agent Jack Crawford. I lead the Behavioral Science Unit.”      

“We’ve met.” Says Will, as he returns his handshake with obviously little relish.  

“Yes, we had a disagreement about the museum when we opened it.”     

“The _Evil Minds_ Research Museum. It’s a little hammy, Jack.”    

Jack Crawford smiles, obviously bemused and somewhat charmed by Will’s bluntness.  He pushes Will’s glasses up on the bridge of his nose, so Will can no longer cling to the comfort of his eye contact barrier. “You’ve hitched your horse to a teaching post. I understand it’s not easy for you to be sociable.”

“I’m just talking at them. I’m not listening to them. It’s not social.”

“Where do you fall on the spectrum?”   

And in that moment Will’s voice drops almost imperceptibly, unconsciously absorbing Jack Crawford’s lower register.  “My horse is hitched to a post closer to Aspergers and Autistics than narcissists and sociopaths.”  

Jack knows that Will is not aware of it. If he were, Jack would not take it so lightly.  

“But you can empathize with narcissists and sociopaths?” Asks Jack and Will’s shoulders shift from their almost perpetual slight slouch, as if he can make himself small enough to disappear, to an echo of Jack’s square and confidant posture.  

“I can empathize with anybody. Less to do with personality disorders than an active imagination.”   

Jack smiles and leans in, resting his hands on the podium, in tone and posture pleasantly supplicating himself.   

“Can I borrow your imagination?” 

* * *

_Darling..._

Jack Crawford’s office is empty, save them, so Will pretends the familiar echo is less than nothing as jack shows him the map and pictures hanging on his wall. Five pretty, all american, youthful brunette girls smiled down at them.      

“Five girls from five different Minnesota campuses abducted in the last five months.” Says Jack and his voice is even, though Will can feel the frustration radiating off of him. 

“I thought there were four.”

“There were.” 

“When did you tag the fifth?”    

“About three minutes before I walked into your lecture hall.” 

“You’re calling them _abductions_ because you have no bodies?” 

“We have nothing. No bodies. No parts of bodies. Nothing that comes out of a body. We  have lonely swabs in used evidence kits.” 

_...Open your eyes._

Will shudders. “Then those girls weren’t taken from where you think they were taken.”

“Then, Where were they taken from?”

“I don’t know. Someplace else.”

“All abducted on a Friday so they’re not reported missing until Monday. However he’s covering his, tracks he needs the weekend to do it.” Says Jack Crawford and Will nods.  

“One through four are dead, don’t you think? He’s not keeping them around. He just got himself a new one.” 

“And that’s the one I want you to focus on. Elise Nichols. St. Cloud State on the Mississippi. Disappeared Friday. Supposed to house sit for her parents over the weekend. Feed their cat. Never made it home.”    

Will nods again, looking up at the faces of the dead, smiling down at him. 

“Same hair color. Same eye color. Roughly same age, height, weight. What is it about all these girls?” Asks Jack and Will shakes his head. 

“It’s not about all of these girls. It’s about one of them.” Will pins Elise Nichols’ photo next to the fifth blue square.  “He’s like Willy Wonka. Every girl he takes is a candy bar. Hidden amongst all those candy bars is the one, true intended victim, which if we follow through on the metaphor, would be your Golden Ticket.”               

Will can feel the ghost of gently pressed lips on his cheeks and scratches at his stubble, trying to dispel the sensation.   

“Warming up for his Golden Ticket or reliving whatever he did to her?” Asks Jack Crawford. 

“Golden Ticket wouldn’t be the first taken and she wouldn’t be the last. He would hide how special she is. I mean, I would. Wouldn’t you?”   

“I’d like you to get closer to this.”  

Will’s cheeks sting from his nervous scratching. He already feels too close. “You have Heimlich at Harvard and Bloom at Georgetown. They do the same thing I do.”  

“That’s not really true, is it? You have a specific way of thinking. You make jumps no one can explain.”    

Will wants to argue but he knows he really cannot. He simply sighs. 

* * *

Elise Nichols was profoundly all American in appearance and her fretting parents proved to be cut from the same cloth as they fretted in their midwestern suburban home, in Duluth Minnesota. They are in turns rationalizing and rationalizing and resigned. 

“She could have gone off by herself. She was a very interior young woman. She didn’t like living in a dorm. I could see how the pressure of school might have gotten to her. She likes trains. Maybe she just got on a train and...” Mr. Nichols ventures. Will directs his gaze to the ground. 

“She looks like the other girls.” Says Mrs Nichols, though that is not what she means.     

“Could Elise still be alive?” Mr Nichols tries. 

“We simply have no way of knowing.” Says Jack Crawford.           

“How’s the cat?” Asks Will Graham. Mrs Nichols and Jack Crawford look confused and Mr Nichols looks offended. “How’s your cat? Elise was supposed to feed it. Was the cat weird when you came home? It didn’t eat all weekend. Must have been hungry.” 

The Nichols barely collectively unfreeze  when Mr Nichols guardedly mumbles that he didn’t notice.  

“He took her from here.” Will pronounces and Jack Crawford’s look of reproach dies as he pulls out his cell phone with purposeful flair of a man with a gun in hand. “She got on a train. She came home. She fed the cat. And he took her.”   

“The Nichols house is a crime scene. I need ERT immediately. Zeller, Katz, Jimmy Price, a photographer.” As Jack continues to bark orders into his phone, Mr Nichols turns to Will Graham with tears in his eyes.     

“Why is it now a crime scene?” 

“Can I see your daughter’s room?” Will asks and Mr Nichols nods, standing to show him the way. Will follows him through the house and hears the yowling of the cat at the bottom of the stairs.    

“I thought you said the cat wasn’t acting weird.” Says Will as he follows Mr Nichols up the stairs.  

“I didn’t even think.” The guilt in Mr Nichols’ voice makes Will swallow anxiously as they alight on the second floor. Will can see the cat outside a closed door, pawing at the door and rubbing itself against the floor, crying. It’s white and fat, rather resembling a giant snowflake. As Mr Nichols reaches for the door Will puts on a pair of rubber gloves.  

“I’ll get that. Mr. Nichols, would you put your hands in your pockets and avoid touching anything please?”  

“We’ve been in and out of here all day!” Mr Nichols insists. 

“You can hold the cat if its easier.” Says Will and Mr Nichols takes the suggestion and folds the cat into his arms. It stills immediately. “Nola, quiet.” Says Mr Nichols as he pats her fur more for his own comfort than his. “Sssssh.”   

Will wraps his hand around the door and opens it slowly, light from the hallway spills across the dark bedroom. Will flicks the light switch revealing the corpse of Elise Nichols, laid with the decorousness of a corpse in a coffin, and dressed in a white night gown, in her own bed. The breeze from an open window ruffles her long dark hair, almost providing the illusion of life. The red puncture wounds visible beneath the white of her night dress ruin the illusion. Her father gasps and calls her name. 

“I need you to leave the room.” Says Will and as Mr Nichols stands frozen, blankly staring at his dead child, Nola escapes his grasp and flies into Elise’s bedroom.    

 “Damn!” Mutters Will and as Mr Nichols surges forward to collect the creature it launches itself straight at the body of its deceased mistress. Will swears the cat moves in slow motion as it moves through the air. Both he and Mr Nichols are yelling and making a move to grab at the cat when it suddenly stops, suspended feet in the air, frantically scrabbling for traction in midair hovering above the florid wounds in Elise’s abdomen.   

“Agent Graham!” Mr Nichols cries, with tears streaming down his face, on the right side of the bed. Will stands on the left with his fists clenched and his bottom lip between his teeth.     

“I’m not an age.....” Will begins out of some strange reflex, which is quelled by Nola letting out a pained yowl and disappearing in mid air.      

Mr Nichols looks at Will and Will looks at Mr Nichols.     

“I need you to leave the room.” Will says and Mr Nichols flees.

 

 

 

  **ACT TWO**

 

 

Jack Crawford and Will stand alone in Elise Nichols’ bedroom.  

“You’re all wired. You talk it out to us when you feel like it, don’t say anything when you don’t feel like it. Take as long as you want. We will come in when you tell us.” Jack Crawford and Will nods as if he’s been forced to swallow something unpleasant. 

Jack leaves and Will turns his attention to the body of Elise Nichols, perusing it with his eyes; The dark hair, the fair skin, the wounds, the white dress, the marks on her neck, the stench of her blood and her corpse. 

Will dry swallows the last of the aspirin he has, before climbing out of the window and onto the porch roof below her window. He curls up on the dirt shingles, arms wrapped around his knees, and takes in the sight of  the police officers,  police cars, and other crime scene specialists assembled on the lawn. He can pick the figure of Jack Crawford out of them all, rubbing his temples with his fingers.  Mr. and Mrs. Nichols are being perfunctorily treated in the back of an Ambulance. A pert of Will wants to snort in derision. Their daughter is dead and no number of empty words will return her to them. A larger part of him knows that there is no correct way to handle situations like these, but a million incorrect ways, and we all merely do our best in the face of them. His shirt is cold against his back, and it is the last thing he registers as he shuts the entire external world out and away, a pendulum swinging behind his eyes, pulled by the gravity of his heart as it hammers beneath his thin skin.  

* * *

Through the window, as he sits on the porch roof, Will can see Elise Nichols sleeping peacefully. Her chest moves up and down with deep even breaths. Will surveys the dark neighborhood, empty and peaceful, for a moment, before he opens the window and silently slips inside. 

He beholds the sleeping girl, with tears in his eyes. He sees her soft warm skin and how youthful her pretty face appears in sleep. Will blinks and falls upon her, cracking her ribs with his knee as he bears down and wraps his hands around her throat. Startled from deep sleep, Elise gasps and struggles as he face reddens with pressure, appearing near to bursting.   

“Useless,” Will finds the words pouring from his lips as if from an unknown fount. “ Timeless and useless.” He grunts as Elise tries to scream beneath him, but cannot. Tears stream down her florid purple cheeks. As the headboard snaps and cracks against wall the life leaves her eyes, slowly and somehow in a second she is gone and only her body rem-- 

“You’re Will Graham.”   

Being ripped so quickly from the space between spaces leaves Will reeling and sick. Jack told him he would be alone. _Jack told him he would be alone_. Jack told him he would be alone! **Jack told him he would be alone.**

“You’re Will Graham.” The voice tries again and will finds he cannot turn to connect that voice to a body as his world tilts on its axis.   

_Open your eyes._

And Will finds himself helpless but to obey and rejoin the waking world. 

“You’re not supposed to be in here.” He says and it sounds like he’s been sleeping for years. He connects the voice to a beautiful woman, tall, asian, and holding tweezers aloft.  

“You wrote the standard monograph on time of death by insect activity.” She says and gestures with her tweezers. “We found a coin in one of the wounds...so, you’re not real FBI?” 

Will wants to ask after the coin, he wants to see it, but the woman’s abrupt change in topic throws him far off kilter, he’s hardly managed to re-immerse himself in his own present.  

“Never been an FBI Agent?” She prods.    

“Strict screening procedures.” Will finds himself saying before he knows why.  

“Detects instability.” She says. The both know this. “You unstable?”    

Just as the quirk of her dark eye brow and the specific lilt of her voice reach Will, and he starts to wonder if she’s flirting with him, Jack Crawford bustles into the room, dissipating the ambiguous charge their interaction had leant the air.  

“Katz, you’re not supposed to be in here.”   

“Found an old coin in one of the wounds, burned into the flesh. Was about to take a look at the other wounds but I was interrupted.”       

“It’s gotta be a fake.” Will jumps and sees another investigator holding a glinting coin between a pair of tweezers. “It’s an 1801 coin in better shape then what you’d be handed in change at a Starbucks.”     

It resembles a quarter in color and roughly in size. It gleams in the light and Will is suddenly overcome with the urge to feel it against the skin of his palm, to pocket it and walk away with it. 

He retreats from the conversation, standing as far away from the man and his coin as he can. 

“Elise Nichols was strangled and suffocated. Ribs were broken. Zeller, You’re telling me this guy finished the job and then stuffed her full of coins, like a display case?”    

“Just two. It looks like there’s another in the wound directly next to it.” Says Katz as she steps away from the body.         

“She’s not a display case.” Says Will, quietly and almost absentmindedly, as if he hadn’t meant to speak at all and the others turn to face him, as if in is brief silence they had forgotten he was there at all. “He’s trying to help.”   

“Help?” Echoes Jack Crawford incredulously.   

“He knew that he couldn’t undo what he’d done entirely, bring her back to life, but he could help her with the transition.”  

“By putting her back where he found her.” Jack finishes and Will nods, offhandedly, as if distracted.    

“Whatever he did to the others, he couldn’t do to her.”   

“Is this his golden ticket?”          

“No.” Will responds and his voice sounds thin.    

“Is this some kind of apology? A moment of weakness?”   

Will shakes his head. “I didn’t mean ‘couldn’t do it’ as in he couldn’t bring himself to do it. All of these girls serve a purpose. Elise Nichols could not serve that purpose. That’s why we have her body.”        

Will finds his eyes drawn to the coin as Zeller puts it in an evidence bag. He feels its loss keenly and tries to blink it away. 

“She was useless.” Will concludes and they stare at him openly, with varying degrees of discomfort and concern. Silence hangs in the room as Will rubs his temples. “Does anyone have any aspirin?” 

* * *

Will is not particularly for or against airplanes. The kinds of twists and turns his mind takes on the average day are far more horrifying than the prospect of his life ending in a plane as it plummets earthward from 35,000 feet. 

What he is against is being trapped in close proximity to others for untold hours, and their screaming children or ungodly snoring, or invasive questioning.  

The flight back from Minnesota to D.C. is late at night, late enough that the plane is mercifully near empty. Will takes an empty row, claiming the window seat for himself, plopping down with little enthusiasm. He sighs as he cracks open a little plastic sample pack of aspirin.  

_Open your eyes._

Will thinks of the glinting coin and the weight of it in his hands and the press of soft lips ghosting across his cheeks and the strangely familiar voice. 

The sensation stretches and warps his perception until suddenly he is warm and comfortable and swaddled between layers of softness.      

“Darling, I’m starting to worry.” 

And there is the voice. Will feels his arm stretched away from him, the only distinct piece of his skin not overwhelmed in warmth. His hand, however, is pinned down, held in place by a larger hand with softer, thicker fingers.   

“The doctor came and said that there has been no permanent damage done, but I can hardly trust even myself when it comes to you.”     

Will feels something burn low in his belly and migrate to his cheeks. He is overly aware of his own heart beat.  

“Won’t you give me some sign that you’re still with me, please?”     

Will can hear something roaring beneath the faint sound of his heart beat, like an engine, and that can’t be right at all because he’s with 

“Hannibal?”       

And if it were not for those familiar lips pressing from the bend in his arm to the tips of fingers, where his fingers are entwined with another’s (Will assumes they must belong to Hannibal), he might never have known he spoke the name aloud at all.     

“Thank god!” Gasps Hannibal and Will smiles, in the throws of bone deep contentment.   

“Sir?”   

“I’m alright.” Says Will as Hannibal continues to kiss and kiss and kiss his skin. “You don’t have to...”   

“Sir?”   

“They must have done more damage than the doctor said if you truly believe for a moment that I do not have to kiss you.”    

Will’s only response is to choke on the nervous laugh that bubbles out of him before he can stifle it.   

“Sir!”   

Though Will has not yet seen Hannibal’s face he knows the feel of his fingers and the small, fine boned hand he can feel on his shoulder sits against his skin like a splinter as the sound of the faraway motors growls louder and louder and quickly drowns out even his own heartbeat. Will opens his eyes to find himself seated in an empty row in coach on a dark plane, strangely cold and empty. He blinks blearily up at one of the stewardesses on his flight. A pretty dark-skinned girl with her hair wound into neat braids.     

“We’re about to take off.” She says pleasantly enough. “I need you to buckle yourself in.”  

Will groans out something that vaguely resembles language and gropes clumsily for his seat belt. Once he’s locked in place the stewardess thanks him and swishes away. 

Will throws his head back against the seat, trying to recapture the warmth he’d found in his dream before he can stop himself. He finds his fingers blindly twitching, seeking the contact of a hand that isn’t there when he finally crosses some sort of line. He thinks of those florid romance novels, the kind with highlanders wielding cleverly placed swords and sighs. What kind of name is Hannibal for some kind of impossible romantic hero anyway? The man who crossed the alps on an elephant? A military strategist? A soldier?   

Will wonders why, if his subconscious mind was to chose any escape from his current stresses, his mind would chose the fantasy of a gay concussed man that can’t even open his eyes. 

Then he remembers the scent of slaughter, tastes the blood on his tongue, and remembers Hannibal’s words.  

_Ssssh darling, we must get out of here. You’ve given quite a bit better than you’ve received, I’m afraid._

The words seem to echo off the inside of the cabin and while the tone feels will with warmth, that warmth chills and freezes when he realizes the implication of those words. 

If he’s severely concussed then that must mean that.... 

Hannibal has a particularly casual, understated, and unruffled way of informing him that he’s just killed someone.   

Will wracks his mind, trying to remember anything at all, but his train of thought it brought to a screeching halt by something crunching under his feet.   

Will looks down to find his sample pack of aspirin dented and the pills crushed to dust beneath his shoe.   

“Fuck!” Says Will Graham succinctly. 

* * *

Will is exhausted as he drives back to his home in Wolf Trap from the airport. He thinks longingly of his bed and mournfully of the wasted aspirin and its untimely death. The uninterrupted road sprawls before him as he drives, hypnotizing and unchanging for miles, until a little dark spot by the side of the road arrests his attention. He squints over the steering wheel as he slows, driving in time with the determined trots of a scruffy dog.     

“Hello.” Calls will and the dog does not acknowledge him, but turns on its heels and continues to trot in the other direction. Will, via illegal u-turn, follows the stubborn creature, occasionally calling out to him. The dog ignores him.   

With a yawn, Will resorts to driving far ahead of the dog, and parking his car police style, with his flashers on. With both lanes blocked he opens his trunk, fishing for the few items he purchased on his way back from the air port, hoping something will be suitable to get the pup’s attention. 

He finds a pack of four hotdogs and rips the packaging open with his teeth. the fluid inside the package drips down his hand, arm, and onto his pant leg as he holds out a single one of the hot dogs. In the middle distance he can see the dog’s ears perk up as it catches a whiff of the hot dog.     He watches as it trots toward him, purposefully.   

Even in the face of food, the dog is still wary, and Will can see the sadness in the creature’s eyes. 

“It’s all right.” Will says, understanding the dog’s mistrust completely. He breaks off a little piece of the treat and drops it on the ground between his feet. It’s a peace offering.      

“You must be hungry.” Says Will and the dog appears to ponder this before cautiously edging forward and bending to take the bit of hot dog in its mouth. As it chews the piece of meat, Will ventures a hand out and lightly scratches its ears. The dog freezes for an instant, before accepting the affection bestowed upon it.    

“Good boy.” Says Will, as kindly as he has the energy to say, and the dog looks at the hot dog left in his hand. Will extends it with a smile and the creature lets out a satisfied little yip. 

Will laughs as the dog joyfully devours the treat, ending up pressed against him with its head nearly in his lap.         

“Do you want to come home with me?” Will asks the dog and it only burrows closer to him, clearly desperate for kind attention.          

* * *

Will has a little custom when he brings home a new member of his pack. He likes to gather all of them on the porch, and tell them he has a surprise for them. Several of the older dogs in his pack, a vaguely german-shepherd-looking-mutt named Rose, and a little basset hound he rescued named Clardy, automatically look at his car from the porch, awaiting the new arrival. The dogs sit, watching as Will leads their newest member to the porch. They watch as he shaves clumps of matted hair from the new dog’s flanks. They watch as Will soaps and bathes the newcomer in a dog-sized plastic tub.     

Will can hear them breathe and snuffle and occasionally scratch their nails against the porch as he gently towel dries and blow dries his newest find’s wet fur. Halfway through towel drying him, it occurs to Will what his name will be.            

“How do you feel about Winston?” Will asks the dog and it only shakes a little, trying to rid itself of any lingering sogginess.   

“Hey!” Will reprimands and Winston seems to physically wilt.  

“Winston it is.” Says Will as he scratches the dog’s ears.        

“Winston, this is everybody.” Will says, looking toward his pack. “Everybody, this is Winston.”   

One of his newer finds, a bull dog he’s named Otis, steps forward and attempts to assert his dominance with a little growl. Will has none of it and quickly reminds the dog of its place with a short rebuke. Otis responds by rolling over and appearing to go sleep. The other dogs obediently sit and wait for their master’s direction.    

“That’s right.” Says Will as he directs Winston to a crate. He loathes crate training, as the dogs never really seem to enjoy it, but its important if Winston is to become a well-trained pet.

Will does his best to ignore Winston’s sad eyes as he leaves him in the crate to shower, and hopefully sleep. As he strips his clothes from the day and leaves them on the floor, he figures he’ll see to them eventually, he watches the rest of his pack settle around the crated Winston, keeping him company, and smiles as he walks naked into his bathroom. 

Even after so many years in the same house, he has somehow not mastered his taps, and manages to nearly scald himself, freeze himself, and then scald himself again before getting the shower at a proper soothingly warm temperature. He sighs under the water, stretching as water beads against his skin and steam rises. It thickens and thickens only to thin and reveal sprawling oaks, their tops extending into an umbra of wooden veins against the night sky, and sodden earth beneath.      

_Open Your Eyes._

Will can smell the wet earth of the bayou as he sticks his head into the spray, trying to drown it out the impossible and unmistakable scent. Will shuts off the water with more force than necessary and tosses himself, wet and naked, into bed. He tosses and turns uneasily for about an hour, his frustration turning to an uneasy sleep, his hair matted awkwardly from rubbing a wet head against a pillow.   

His mercifully dreamless sleep is cut to a screeching halt by the sudden feeling that his space has been invaded. 

Will Graham is not alone.     

This suspicion is confirmed when, over the hammering of his heart he can hear the steady breathing of another. Will’s eyes dart desperately around the room. He can feel the dip in the bed beside him and he searches in vain for any other explanation than the interloper laying beside him.  

Will turns in bed, almost effortlessly after what felt to be an eternity of panicked fear, and sees the wind-chafed pearlescent skin streaked with the creeping shadows cast by trees in the moonlight and the long dark hair of Elise Nichols pooling in the creases formed by his sheets. She’s wearing the white nightdress she wore in her own bed, the red wounds in her stomach glint with the silver coins embedded inside them. 

Will, nothing stopping him this time, reaches out with a shaking hand and insinuates a single finger in the hole in her abdomen, the flesh unwilling to give. He pries away at it with his forefinger and thumb, the smell of rotting and death overwhelming as he digs within her stiff flesh for the coin he can just scrape with the tips of his fingernails.    

_Open your eyes._

“No.” Will grinds out as he digs and digs, congealed blood and fluid oozing out of the wound as he makes it deeper and warps its shape.     

_Open your eyes!_

“NO!” Will insists and suddenly Elise Nichols‘ head snaps toward him, her jaw unhinging as she lets out screams of ungodly agony, her eyes blurring at the corners as Will falls away from her, clamping his hands over his ears to drown out her screams. 

Will awakes naked and shaking, bent over the side of his bed, with his hands clamped over his ears as he screams into the darkness. 

It is not until his dogs gather around him, growling and seeking to protect their master, that Will stops screaming.    

“Ssssh.” He tries to comfort them, though his throat is raw from screaming. “It was just a dream.” He says as he scratches and pets whichever of his pack are nearest taking comfort in their solid warmth. That comfort is abruptly derailed by a single, prissy little meow.   

Will does not own a cat, but when he looks behind him, he sees a fluffy white cat calmly licking itself in the space Elise Nichols had occupied moments ago. With shaking hands he reaches out and pulls the animal closer, looking at its collar and tag to be sure, though he recognizes it immediately. His hands shake as he retrieves his glasses from his night stand and holds the animal close to him with one hand and fans out its tag with the other. 

“N...Nola Nichols.” He reads aloud, stammering and the beginning of tears beading in the corners of his tired eyes. “431, Lake Drive, Duluth MN, 55701.”     

Will wants to cry. Will wants to scream. Will desperately wants something about this all to make sense. 

Nola butts his palm with her head and he strokes her fur before he can think about it. The cat seems unusually affectionate. When his left hand begins to falter in its strokes, growing tired, the cat seems to sense this, and begins to butt at his right hand.  

With his head in one hand, and his shoulders heaving with unsteady breaths, Will continues to stroke Nola, who revels in the attention.  

 

 

**ACT THREE**

 

Maybe it’s juvenile, in actuality Will knows it entirely juvenile, but he had seen Jack waiting outside his office, and his fight or flight reflexes had taken hold, leading him to a bathroom down the hall. 

He didn’t want to look into the case anymore. He didn’t want to think about it anymore. He didn’t want to talk to Jack about it. He hoped the email he had sent between lectures earlier in the morning was clear.   

“FUCK THIS AND FUCK YOU.” He wanted to scream in the man’s face, and contained it to a two paragraph email outlining all of the ways he was unfit to work this case, trying to prove that he was not an asset. 

By the tapping of Jack’s foot and the impatient set of his shoulders as he waited outside his office, Will guessed he had seen through it. For somebody who professes to needing Will’s help at catching killers, he is an adept judge of character and fitness. He knows what is needed and what is excess. He knows what is required to complete any task. He knows for this one Will is needed. 

Will knows that he’s needed too, and is, perhaps, the only one who can see this thing through to its natural end. And that’s the problem. 

Jack thinks this is another routine psychopath, killing to fulfill some set of reconstructed social rules and regulations, and Will can snatch a glimpse at the book of rules and use that to catch him.     

Will turns the tap and fills the sink with water. He’s dunks his face in once its full, and imagines the cool water turning to steam against his overheated skin.   

This is more than that.  

Will blows bubbles under water for only a second, and finds the act strangely dissatisfying.   

This involves a literal bending of the rules and regulations, extending far passed anything social or societal.      

Will thinks of Nola and the new eyes carved in Elise Nichols’ abdomen and shivers as he withdraws from the water.     

“It’s like Schrodinger’s fucking cat.” Will mumbles to himself as he blinks water droplets off of his eyelashes and reaches for paper towels. He hears the door open as he dries his face, and recognizes Jack Crawford’s footsteps. 

“What are you doing in here?” Asks the man and Will is reminded of his perpetually disappointed elementary professor. 

“I enjoy the smell of urinal cake.” He returns dryly before he can think about it and Jack Crawford doesn’t give him the time to appreciate his own sarcastic humor. 

“Me too. Let’s talk.”  

An agent Will half-recognizes enters to use the facilities and Jack Crawford turns on him with the roar and snap of an angry bear. 

“Use the ladies’ room!” He hollers and Will watches as the agent turns on his heel and Jack closes the door, casually blocking it with his entire body.  

Will groans internally. 

“Do you respect my judgement Will?” Jack Crawford is angry and Will can’t blame him. He becomes so momentarily enrapt in it that he almost forgets an answer is required of him.    

“Yes.” Will says eventually, because its true.       

“We have a better chance of catching this guy if you’re in the saddle.”   

“I’m in the saddle! Just confused which direction I’m pointing. You think I am needed here because I can understand this kind of psychopath but....”  Will bites his lips and closes his eyes momentarily.   

“But?” Jack Crawford pulls him back to earth, and suddenly his tone is gentle, and slightly patient. Will frowns. He hates it when people treat him like a fragile thing, a spooked animal that needs to be coaxed into a petting. He squares his jaw and straightens his shoulders from their perpetual semi-slouch.    

“I don’t know this kind of psychopath, Jack. I’ve never read about him or studied him. I don’t even know...” _How he turned a girl’s body into a...thing that throws cats around time and space at random._ “...if he’s a psychopath. Never read about him. Never studied him. Never otherwise encountered anything like him. I don’t even know if he’s a psychopath. He’s not insensitive. He’s not shallow!”   

Will feels exhausted. And Jack seems to echo the sentiment.  

“You could tell something about him or you wouldn’t’ve known about how he was trying to help Elise Nichols with the transition. Transition between what?”     

“I don’t know.” Says Will. “Life and death maybe? He only takes what he needs to survive, she couldn’t perform that function, so he felt bad for taking unnecessarily, and figured he’d make it up to her by giving her what help he could.”   

“Feeling bad defeats the purpose of being a psychopath, doesn’t it?”   

Will nods. 

“Then what kind of crazy is he?” 

“He couldn’t use her, honor her in his usual way, so he put her corpse back where he created it, wrapped and ready for Charon. Whatever kind of crazy that is.”          

“You think this is his way of honoring them?”     

Will nods again.  “And his way of loving them, well, at least one of them.” 

“There was no semen or saliva. Elise Nichols died a virgin and that corpse kept her promise.”

Will frowns, disgusted. Offended on the behalf of a man he’s yet to meet. “That’s not how he’s loving them! He wouldn’t disrespect them that way. He doesn’t want these girls to suffer. He kills them quickly and, to his thinking, with mercy. It is their deaths that matter to him, not their pain. If it were his choice, they might not suffer at all!” 

“The sensitive psychopath. He risked getting caught to tuck Elise Nichols back into bed.” Jack sounds incredulous. 

“He has to take the next girl soon. He knows he’s going to get caught. One way or the other. And Elise could not be what he needed her to be. He needs the next one before then.”          

Jack sighs a long sigh. 

* * *

In hair and fiber at the FBI headquarters, Beverly Katz has been going over the deceased Elise Nichols’ nightdress with a fine toothed comb. It hangs above a lab table, covered in white paper, from a hanger. Under the bright lights and still air, she brushes the nightie with a metal spatula, working with the wale and across it and the nap and against it. 

Her eyes brighten as something tiny falls from the fabric of the night dress and lands on the white paper. 

“Gotcha!” She pronounces with a small, self satisfied grin. The tiny curl of metal she’s found glints in the bright light.  

* * *

On a construction site in Minnesota a  young woman, still almost a girl, with long dark hair and bright blue eyes steps out of a seven year old black toyota. She could be sisters with Elise Nichols, though her eyes are piercing blue. She waves at a man working the handle of a pipe cutter, and he is nearly obscured by the massive machine.  

She is Jack Crawford’s golden ticket. 

She knows the man who wants to kill her and her name is Abigail Hobbs.    

* * *

At the FBI Academy in Quantico Virginia, Jack Crawford walks beside the beautiful Dr. Alana Bloom, one of the most noted psychology professors in America.   

“Graham likes you. He doesn’t think you run any mind games on him.” Jack Crawford tells her as they fall into step. 

“I don’t. I’m as honest with him as I’d be with a patient.” 

“Been observing him during your guest lectures at the academy?” 

“Never been in a room alone with Will. I want to be his friend. And I am. You already asked me to do a study on him. I said no.” Alana reminds him. Jack recalls that conversation. It had not ended well. Will perpetually carries the air of a kicked puppy, and it tends to arouse a protective instinct in those who are so inclined. Dr Alana Bloom is incredibly inclined. 

“Seemed a shame not to take advantage, academically speaking.” Jack attempts to lighten the tone of the conversation, while maintaining its substance. 

“Anything scholarly on Will Graham would be published posthumously.” Alana insists, tolerating no deflection and brooking no argument. Jack sighs.  

“Why aren’t you ever alone with him?” He ventures. 

“Because I have a professional curiosity about him.” 

“And if he caught you peeking, he’d snatch down the shades?” 

Alana has had enough. She knows what this is really about. 

“Normally I wouldn’t even broach this, but what do you think one of Will’s strongest drives is?”

“Fear. He deals with huge amounts of fear. Comes with imagination.”   

“Imagination?” Alana scoffs.   

“Yes.” Jack insists. “Imagination.”  

“Well then, fear is the price of _imagination._ ”

“I wouldn’t put him out there if I couldn’t cover him.” 

The look Alana shoots Jack tells him everything he needs to know about her opinion on that particular statement. 

“If I couldn’t cover him eighty percent!” He relents and Alana looks less than impressed. 

“I wouldn’t put him out there.”   

“He’s out there. And I need him out there. And I need you to make sure he’s not left out there.”

Alana comes to a stop and Jack stops beside her. “You really don’t want me commenting on this in any official capacity. It wouldn’t reflect well on you.” 

He heaves a frustrated breath and Alana uncrosses her arms, holding out her hands as her face softens.  

“Promise me something, Jack. Don’t let him get too close.”  

Jack makes that promise. And he even thinks he’ll be able to keep it. 

* * *

In the examination room at the FBI headquarters Beverly Katz and Brian Zeller stand watching as Jimmy Price unzips the body bag containing the corpse of Elise Nichols. They all wear aprons, gloves, and splash visors. 

“Tried her skin for prints. Of course, nothing. Though we did get a hand spread off her neck.” Say Jimmy Price says as he continues to unzip the body bag.  

“Report say anything about nails?” Asks Beverly as she catches Will walk into the room out of the corner of her eye. He’d been sent by Jack to take another look at the body. She smiles at him and he is too busy watching his feet to acknowledge her. 

“Her fingernails were smudged when we took scrapings. The scrapings were where she cut her palms with them. She never scratched him.” Zeller says with a little sigh and Beverly taps her foot absentmindedly against the floor.  

“Curly piece of metal is all we got.” She says.    

Will is outfitted like the other agents, in gloves, an apron, and a splash visor. He stiffly pushes the visor down from behind his hairline to over his eyes and blinks and splutters momentarily, sensitive to the obstruction of his vision and the way it touches the skin behind his ears.  

“W-we should be looking at plumbers, steamfitters, uh, toolworkers.”  Will says as he takes a breath to reorient himself and forces himself to look in the body bag.    

_Open your eyes_

Wills hands close around nothing, in pursuit of Hannibal’s touch as he looks where Elise Nichols had been only a second before, and finds darkness spilling from the open bag like ink. A series of  gold and silver coins spill forth onto the floor, old and gleaming like they were stripped from the bottom of a wishing well.             

And as hands twine around his shoulders and one slides to rest between his naval and the jutting v of his hip bones, burning warmth, Will can see Elise Nichols’ body, free standing and impaled, blood dripping from the gleaming wounds in her abdomen. The blood arcs in the air, sprouting like oak branches from her dead body, forming a red umbra in their wake as they expand upward and outward, dwarfing her corpse. Antlers sprout from her wounds, materializing slowly and holding her grey body up and shoving it forward, mere feet from Will’s quaking form.    

“I uh....” Says will and the vision snaps. Price, Zeller and Katz look at him expectantly, waiting for him to say something brilliant. Will’s stomach turns. He feels sticky with sweat. He has nothing. The agents move on. 

“Other injuries were probably but not conclusively postmortem.” Says Zeller and he looks at Katz. “She wasn’t gored.”    

At that moment Will wonders how much conversation he missed. 

“She has lots of piercings that look like they were caused by deer antlers,” Katz insists.  “I didn’t say the deer was responsible for putting them there.” 

“She was mounted on them. Like hooks. She may have been bled.” Says Will. His voice sounds thin. Katz and Price glance at him. Zeller is too distracted by his investigation of the abdominal wounds.

“Her liver was removed. He took it out and put it back in. See.” Zeller exclaims as he outlines the wound over her liver, one which had been made with surgical precision. “Why cut out her liver if he was just going to sew it back in again?”   

“Useless.” Mumbles Will and Zeller blinks, offense flickering across his face. “She couldn’t serve his purpose because...” Will tries to wipe the sweat off of  his brow and finds his visor in the way. He slides it up, perching it on top of his head, and blinks like a baby exposed to bright daylight for the first time. His face loses all expression, going slack as it shines in the white light. “Something was wrong with the meat.”  

Zeller’s head snaps up from Elise Nichols’ corpse. He looks at Will almost suspiciously, the words seeming to uncomfortably twinge his lips. “She has liver cancer.”    

And in that moment reflections of voices and blood and glinting silver and tearing flesh and soft hands weave themselves together in a gossamer tapestry behind Will’s eyes. The pendulum seems to bounce off his thudding heart.     

“He’s absorbing them.” Says Will Graham. 

Zeller, Price, and Katz look at him questioningly. 

“Eating them.” Will swallows.  

* * *

In a lush and well-appointed dining room, a man, handsome and wrapped in a tailored, expensive suit of fine material, sits at gleaming table of dark wood. The solemn strains of Bach’s Goldberg Variations slither along the air as he sits at his table, savoring the scents of his freshly prepared liver. It is a single serving on a white plate, beautifully and delicately garnished.     

Handsome and dangerous looking with something skull-like about his sharply pointed face, the corner of his sensuous mouth flicks upwards only slightly as he cuts a piece of liver, skewering it with his fork before applying a balance of garnishes with his knife. He takes a bite and chews measuredly and with great precision, as he does all things.

Even as he dines alone, it is an act of control upon his own personal universe, and he relishes it, savoring his own power as well as the richness of a finely prepared liver. He closes his eyes, his fork and knife cleanly severing the meat without touching the plate beneath. 

Meet Dr Hannibal Lecter. 

 

 

 

  
**ACT FOUR**  

 

Hannibal Lecter’s office is ridiculously grandiose and a perfect reflection of the man himself. There is dressed to kill, and then there is dressed to dominate, and as Hannibal sits, shoulders back and legs crossed, his patient leaning toward him in an unconscious display of supplication, he knows he has achieved his intended effect, subtle plaid, windsor knot, and all. 

His office is tall and virtually spare, a the tasteful collection of objects barely making a dent in the negative space. He sits in one chair, his patient far away in another chair, and the mezzanine on which his many leather bound books sit on a full shelves that stretch to the ceiling behind him. The windows are covered with thickly striped curtains, removing them from the rest of Baltimore. 

Franklyn  Froideveaux is a man that cannot be helped. He seeks human connection and to be needed, but is terrified of the weight of that connection and the implication of that mutual need, so he attaches himself to those  who are needless, and cannot be connected with. On top of this, his very brain and body are conspiring against him, causing him to quake with fear seemingly at random, convinced to his core that he is mere seconds from being torn apart. 

He is slightly pudgy, but freshly pressed and smartly dressed. His pale face turns red as he weeps. 

Dr Lecter watches as he weeps. He knows there is no help for Franklyn.  

Franklyn is reaching out to him, toward him, and Hannibal knows that he wants the tissues that are far away from him, sitting on the table by Hannibal’s chair. 

He does not relent. Franklyn will ask for what he wants or he will not get it. Life does not stop the door of Doctor Hannibal Lecter, and he loathes psychiatrists who attempt to project the illusion of a little pocket reality where pain is an impossibility. 

Pain is human. Pain is key to the psyche. Pain is divine. We are forged in reaction to pain. And only when we understand it can we understand ourselves and what we are. Franklyn has no understanding of himself. He does not know why he does the things he does. And he does not want to know. He has looked at his broken leg, decided he scraped his knee, and has spent his life going from person to person asking them to bandage it. Long term cognitive dissonance has helped to develop an acute anxiety in him. He is wounded, but he will never know where or why or how deeply.  

It it impossible to understand yourself when fear is as far as you can go. And this is why there can be no help for Franklyn.     

“Please!” The man gasps through his tears and Hannibal relents, passing him the box, careful not to let their fingers brush.  

Hannibal studies him, watching him as pulls a tissue from the box and blows his nose rather loudly. 

Hannibal rather loudly wishes that he would stop. For an instant his disdain flickers in the depths of his dark eyes.

“I hate being this neurotic.” Moans Franklyn and Hannibal can’t help but find it all a little ironic. Franklyn hates it? Yes. In over ten years with various therapists has he made any conscious effort to acknowledge his patterns? No. Some people are eternally in their own way. While intellectually Hannibal can recognize that particular trick of the human psyche, he will never understand it. 

“If you weren’t neurotic, Franklyn, you would be something much worse.” Hannibal briefly entertains what that would be as the man continues to sniffle as he collects himself. Perhaps parasitic?  “Our brain is designed to experience anxiety in short bursts, not the prolonged foamy lathers of duress your neuroses seem to enjoy. It’s why you feel as though a lion were on the verge of devouring you.” 

As Franklyn nods and places a small clump of used tissues on the small table by his chair, for a fleeting moment Hannibal shares an acute sense of camaraderie with that lion of his own invention.   

“You have to convince yourself the lion is not in the room. When it is, I assure you, you will know it.”  Hannibal’s smile is not appropriate for the matter of discussion. It is wry and unsympathetic, but Franklyn laps it up as if it were praise. When Hannibal announces the end of their session he thanks him profusely. He thanks him again as Hannibal rises from his chair, indicating that its time for him to follow him out. Franklyn would never leave if he was not escorted. 

Hannibal walks Franklyn to the exit, opens the door, and is disturbed to find a man he does not recognize waiting there, as it is a private exit for his patients. To have found it means the man was doing more exploring than is polite.  

“Doctor Lecter?” The man asks and while Hannibal does not know him, he knows what he is. 

“I hate to be discourteous, but this is a private exit for my patients.”  

“I’m Special Agent Jack Crawford with the F.B.I. May I come in?” Asks Jack as he holds out his credential. As Hannibal eyes them with a certain type of ice, but it seems more to be his natural state than anything Jack had specifically done.     

“You may wait in the waiting room.” Hannibal takes a look at his badge and then returns his gaze to Franklyn, who looks scandalized and on the verge of heart attack, questions about to burst out of his quivering lips. 

“I’ll see you next week, Franklyn. Unless of course this is about him?”    

Jack shakes his head with a pleasant smile. “Oh, no, this is all about you.”    

* * *

Hannibal keeps Jack waiting for several minutes, nothing impolite, but enough that Jack could read his displeasure into it if he was looking for it. He is not, and waits idly, flipping through a magazine, as Hannibal scans his notes of Franklyn in his office, going over and amending them where necessary.      

Jack’s head perks up from his magazine as the door to the office opens and Hannibal Lecter stands coolly in the doorway in an immaculate three piece suit.      

Hannibal blinks and forces a flat smile. “Please. Come in.” He says and Jack does, stepping into his incredibly well-appointed office, appreciative of the vast and tasteful collection of books, art, and artifacts.       

“May I ask how this is all about me?” Asks Hannibal and there is something about him like the coil of an expectant snake, waiting for the opportune moment. 

“You can ask, but I do need to ask you a few questions first.” Jack is overwhelmingly pleasant. He takes a breath. “Are you expecting another patient?”   

“We’re all alone.” Hannibal replies. 

“No secretary?” 

“She was pre-dispositioned to romantic whims. Followed her heart to the United Kingdom. Sad to see her go.”  

Jack nods off-handedly as his eyes find the meticulous pencil drawing’s on Hannibal’s desk of Parisian architecture and landscapes. “Are these yours, doctor?”  

“Among the firsts. My boarding school in Paris when I was a boy.” 

“Incredible amount of detail.”  

Hannibal picks up a pencil and deftly cuts a point in it with a scalpel, blowing the shavings off the tip to reveal its sharpness. “I learned very early a scalpel cuts better points than a pencil sharpener.” Hannibal sits down the pencil, but not the scalpel. He listens to Jack as he speaks, eyes drifting to the other man’s jugular. Hot blood itches there against the skin. 

“I understand your drawing got you an internship at Johns Hopkins.” 

Hannibal’s nostrils flair, his pupils dilate, his heart maintains its steady pace, ringing like death knell in the hollow crevices of his vast office. 

“I am beginning to suspect you are investigating me, Agent Crawford.” Which is an understatement. Hannibal still holds the scalpel in hand.  

“You were referred to me by Alana Bloom in the psychology department at Georgetown.”   

And suddenly the iciness of Hannibal’s demeanor thaws ever so slightly. Jack can see a faint smile fighting to escape. 

“Most psychology departments are filled with ham radio enthusiasts and other personality-deficients. Dr. Bloom would be the exception.” 

Down goes the scalpel.   

“You mentored her during her residency at John Hopkins?” 

“I learned as much from her as she learned from me.” 

“She showed me your paper in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Evolutionary Origins of Social Exclusion.”   

“And?”   

“Very interesting, even to a layman.” 

“A layman? So many learned fellows going about in the halls of Behavioral Science at the F.B.I. and you consider yourself a layman?” Hannibal knows he is being flattered. He knows he will be asked for something soon. He wishes that Jack Crawford would simply ask him. The number of times he has called him ‘doctor’ over the course of the conversation has been very telling. This is not Jack Crawford’s true face. Hannibal is already bored with him. 

“I do when I’m in your company, Doctor. I’d like you to help me with a psychological profile.” 

Transparently obsequious or not, Hannibal will do anything for the friend of friend. He also cannot deny that his interest is piqued. His own practice hardly supplies him with minds of a certain calibre, the minds he so resonates with and enjoys picking apart and overcoming.  

* * *

In Jack Crawford’s office sits Hannibal Lecter.  Hannibal has dressed down for his visit to the FBI headquarters, various shades of beige replacing what he had shown to be an indisputably immaculate yet ostentatious personal taste, with his exquisitely tailored plaid on plaid ensemble. They are waiting on one Will Graham, who enters looking like he’s run a marathon, sweating profusely and his clothes askew. 

“Jack, I’ve been thinking--” He starts and comes to a screeching halt upon seeing someone sitting in the chair opposite Jack’s desk. He had not expected another person to be there, and it takes him nearly a minute to recalibrate himself to accommodate the unanticipated obstruction of space.  His glasses are perched on his nose strategically to shield him from direct eye contact.  

“Will,” Says Jack and the man looks slightly to the left of him. “This is Dr Hannibal Lecter.”  

In that moment Will feels as if the magnetic poles of the earth have switched, and propelled him uncaringly into a vast universe. He feels his stomach knot around itself. The name itself implies an array of memory Will has not yet primed himself to cope with in the presence of others.  He watches out of the corner of his eye as the man rises from his chair, turning to face him. From the sight of those hands, Will can match the spread of them to the feel of them on his body. He hazards a flash of a glance at that mouth, and he feels the imprint of it against his skin. Will wants an explanation. He wants somebody to blame. He can feel the men watching him, misunderstanding his apprehension entirely. He feels a bead of sweat roll down the back of his neck, burrowing into the fabric of his undershirt. His foot shakes and he cannot stop it. 

“I have been asked to assist in psychological profiling.” Says Hannibal and Will knows that voice as surely as he knows that it belongs to a man desperate to kiss his skin, who he has never met, who he has been dreaming of for days. He nods offhandedly, so unbearably rude and dismissive, that were he looking at Jack, he would notice his disapproval. Hannibal himself is unruffled, and even smiles slightly as Will takes his seat. Hannibal takes the one next to him.    

Will seems determined to pretend he isn’t there at all, his whole body shifted subtly away from the man, though his eyes betray him, flickering between pretending not to look and denial that the space beside him is occupied. This is the man from his dreams. Of his dreams? Decidedly _from._ Will finds the urge to ask him how he is real almost overwhelming. He chews on his tongue. 

Jack looks between them, Hannibal clearly finding something charming in Will’s discomfort. Will, while uncomfortable with most people, seems on the verge of a veritable breakdown in the presence of the doctor. Jack wonders if they have some kind of history. Will’s particular level of mounting horror merits something far beyond the casual. Jack looks between them and Will, aware of his thoughts in the way he always seems to be, turns white. He is thirty seconds from bolting when Hannibal diffuses the situation, pricking it open with a well-aimed pin.  

“Tell me then, how many confessions?” Asks Hannibal, with a smile unlike any he showcased while alone with Jack Crawford. He seems to be preening under Will’s confused and begrudging perusal of his person. It lends him a more human color.   

“Twelve dozen last time I checked. None of them knew details. Until this morning. Then everyone knew details. Some genius in Duluth PD took a picture of Elise Nichols’ body with their phone and shared it with a few close friends. Freddy Lounds ran it on Tattlecrime.com.” Says Jack and Will frowns.    

“Tasteless.” Scoffs Will, eyes still obscured by the frames of his glasses.  

“Do you have trouble with taste?”  Asks Hannibal with that same little knowing smile. 

“My thoughts are often not tasty.” Will shoots back and while Hannibal’s glacial dislike seems impassioned and almost a default, Will’s is hot and acerbic and genuine. Will can’t help but bleed his thoughts and feelings as organically and immediately as he experiences them. He is still sweating, on the verge of breaking apart. It is how other people seem to operate to him, as their psyches bleed into him and he snatches at pieces, wondering how he will recreate himself and who he will be after the next interaction. It is a natural state. Will is spongelike, a nubile mind. Childlike in its elasticity. 

“Nor mine. No effective barriers.” 

“I make forts.” Says Will and Hannibal likes him already.  

“Associations come quickly.” 

“So do forts.”   

It is a kind of banter. It is not pleasant but it is easy. Hannibal must take it further. Hannibal has noticed that Will refuses eye contact. He seizes upon it. 

“Not fond of eye contact, are you?” 

“Eyes are distracting. You see too much. You don’t see enough. And it’s hard to focus when you’re thinking those whites are really white or they must have hepatitis, or is that a burst vein? So I try to avoid eyes whenever possible.” 

Will knows he is lying. Hannibal knows he is lying. And Will knows that Hannibal knows. Hannibal seems unable to keep the smile from his face and Will’s lip twitches. With the borderline giddy glee of a schoolboy sticking gum in the hair of a girl he fancies bubbling inside of him, barely expressed in that small smile, Hannibal continues to poke at him. 

“I imagine what you see and learn touches everything else in your mind. Your values and decency are present yet shocked at your associations, appalled at your dreams. No forts in the bone arena of your skull for things you love.” 

Will recoils with a grimace. Of course Doctor Hannibal Lecter knows what he is. This man he’d thought he’d imagined, this man who _touched_ him when no one touched him. And _needed_ him when no one really did. He needed him to wake up. To 

 _Open your eyes._  

Seeing his full lips wrap so precisely and casually around cruel words. Murder as routine. Will knows that the mind cannot invent voices or faces from nothing. Where has he seen this man who, of course, already knows him so well.   

Of course Will refuses to give him the satisfaction of validation. Will does not know who or what this man is, and he has no desire to.  

“Whose profile are you working on?” Will barks, and then turns to Jack, hysteria beading in the corners of his eyes. “Whose profile is he working on?” Will buttons and unbuttons his jacket several times, obviously preparing to depart in a huff. 

“I am sorry, Will. We are as we are. I can’t shut mine off any more than you can shut yours off.”  

This only perturbs Will further. 

“Will-” Jack begins and Will doesn’t even look at him. 

“Please don’t psychoanalyze me. You won’t like me when I’m psychoanalyzed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go give a lecture on psychoanalyzing.” With that Will scoots out of his chair  and departs in a rush, leaving Hannibal and Jack alone. 

Jack wants to ask about their history, or if there even is any. After all, Will rarely reacts to anyone or anything that isn’t a serial killer or a victim in a way that connects any dots. Jack will not even  begin to presume to understand his mind. 

“Maybe we shouldn’t poke him like that doctor. Maybe use a less direct approach.” Jack says instead.  

“What he has is pure empathy. And projection. He can assume your point of view, or mine,  and maybe some other points of view that scare him. It’s an uncomfortable gift, Jack. Perception’s a tool that’s pointed on both ends.” Though Hannibal perceived what he believes to be the truth of Will’s discomfort, he saw his eyes flicker to his hands and lips beneath lowered lashes, he will not explore that particular topic with Jack. Buried beneath Will’s obvious discomfort at having his psyche dissected, are these interesting and highly useful bits and pieces. Hannibal peruses this as he scans the pictures of the Minnesota murder victims.  

“This cannibal you have him getting to know,” Hannibal begins and the small bemused smile he’s had ever since Will Graham walked in is still present. There’s a certain lightness to him. The possible inklings of a sense of humor. Jack, privately, admits a certain curiosity.  How did they know each other? Hannibal certainly made no indication that they were in any way familiar. Will, however, looked at him as if he’d seen a ghost. 

“I think I can help good Will see his face.” Hannibal finishes. 

 

 

 

  **ACT FIVE**

 

In a field in Minnesota rests the body of Cassie Boyle, mounted on antlers like a table top, stretched and white as marble. A murder of crows has flocked to the tableaux, like a host of refined guests, dressed neatly in black. They peck at her corpse, hungry. Beside them sits Will Graham, another guest, and clinging starving scavenger pecking at the raw flesh, another body in the murder of crows, as it attempts to gorge itself as one organism, the organism of decay. 

“I feel like I’m dreaming.” He says. 

 _Open your eyes._ Says Dr Hannibal Lecter. 

Will shivers and feels something crawling under his skin. 

“The head was reported stolen last night about a mile from here.” Says Jack Crawford and suddenly Will is standing beside him, trying to blink back the morning sun.  

“Just the head?” Asks Will through a yawn, ignoring the feeling of something cold sliding and stretching beneath the layers of his skin.  

Brian Zeller, Beverly Katz, and Jimmy Price are combing the immediate area for forensic evidence. Jack stares as Beverly and Brian Zeller attempt to shoo the crows away. Will can feel whatever it is in the crook of his elbow. His fingers twitch listlessly, aching to get it out. 

“Minneapolis homicide has already made a statement. They’re calling him the Minnesota Shrike.” Says Jack Crawford and Will looks up at the sky, begging its vastness for the feeling to fade. It’s like a splinter wedged in his mind, irritating him past the point of function.  

“Like the bird?” Will Graham says. He looks as if he might be sick. Jack says nothing. 

“Shrike’s a perching bird. Impales mice and lizards on thorny branches and barbed wire. Rips their organs right out of their bodies and then puts them in a little birdie pantry and eats them later.” Says Jimmy Price as he unflappably shoos away a crow that came near to landing on his head.   

“Can’t tell if it’s sloppy or shrewd.” Jack says and Will wobbles only slightly, gripping his forearm where he can feel something there that wasn’t there before, right under his skin. 

“He wanted her to be found this way. It’s the homicidal equivalent of fecal smearing. It’s petulant. I almost feel like he’s mocking her.” Will grimaces and then looks right at Jack. “Or he’s mocking us.”  

“Where’d all his love go?” Asks Jack and will wraps his hand around his forearm. 

“Whoever tucked Elise Nichols into bed didn’t paint this picture.” He says as he flexes his muscle and feels whatever it is scraping against him. 

Jack eyes him briefly before writing it off as some kind of tick, probably for his own convenience. He has larger concerns than whatever is bothering Will Graham, a man perpetually bothered by everything and everyone. 

“He took her lungs.” Says Brian Zeller from behind Cassie Boyle’s corpse, where he examines the wounds.  “I think she was still alive when he cut them out.”    

* * *

Alone in his kitchen, as pristine and cold as a hospital room, Dr Hannibal Lecter presses a pair of healthy pink lungs flat against his cutting board. He works with a charming lightness of step and animal grace, massaging the air out of Cassie Boyle’s lungs long, collecting the very last of her breath, as strains of Strauss drift by his trim form, as if on a breeze. His dark eyes gleam with quiet satisfaction.  

* * *

Will is looking at the ground, hand clenched over his forearm, as Jack Crawford and Brian Zeller peruse Cassie Boyle’s body, standing opposite each other, almost as if replacing the murder that had previously occupied the table. Beverly Katz and Jimmy Price work nearby, trying to find disturbances in the field which would indicate footprints.  

“Our cannibal loves women. He doesn’t want to destroy them. He wants to consume them. Keep some part of them inside. Make use of their power, which he respects, insofar as it serves him. This girl’s killer is his own source of power. And she was just a pig.” Says Will as he takes his place at the head of the table. 

“You think this is a copy cat?” Asks Jack Crawford.   

Will takes in the open field, considering the stage. “I don’t know. The Cannibal who killed Elise Nichols had a place to do it and no interest in field Kabuki. He has a house or two, or a cabin. Something with an antler room.” He barely finishes before letting out a muffled gasp as his arm burns and suddenly the sensation fades. He let’s it go.  

* * *

With the finesse and concentration of a surgeon Hannibal dunks the charmingly pink offal into a gently simmering wine stock and transfers it to another pan.  He fries it with meat and onions, too entranced and enrapt in his task to notice the coin-shaped bulge blinking in and out of existence beneath the tanned skin of his sensuous and shapely and forearm, framed by the stark white of his pristinely folded sleeves.   

* * *

_Open your eyes_

Will grits his teeth and forces himself to look back at Cassie Boyle’s corpse, the table over which he presides. The words seem to spill forth from his lips. “He has a daughter. Same age as the other girls. Same hair color, same eye color, same height, same weight. She’s an only child. She’s leaving home. She is important. She has made him. He can’t stand the thought of losing her. She’s his Golden Ticket.”   

“What about the copy cat?” Asks Jack immediately, never sufficiently pleased. 

“An intelligent psychopath, particularly a sadist, is hard to catch. There’s no traceable motive. 

There’ll be no patterns. He may never kill like this again.” Says Will offhandedly as he stalks toward the police tape, suddenly desperate to get away. He stops only when he’s right outside of the yellow tape, looking indignantly to Jack’s left, where there is nothing but empty field. “Have Dr. Lecter work up a psychological profile. You seem to be impressed with his opinion.”

* * *

In is his dining room, at a long table, Hannibal Lecter sits alone with Cassie Boyle’s freshly cooked lungs nestled lovingly on fine china, in the middle of an array silver forks and spoons.  

Dr Hannibal Lecter owns nothing less than fine china.      

He eats ceremoniously, with practiced slowness, savoring his kill in methodical bites between sips of wine.   

On his third bite he notices a spot of red on his forearm, and before he is close enough to taste it he smells his own blood. He licks it away, surprised to find unblemished skin beneath. He looks around the dark corners of his his dining room, as if he will find some sort of answer there, before returning to Cassie Boyle’s lungs. 

It would not do to have them get cold. 

* * *

Will went to sleep in a Holliday Inn in Minneapolis, in a double bed with stiff cotton blankets, and wakes up draped in silk and drenched in sweat. 

At first he thinks he’s had a nightmare, when he realizes that he not only feels wholly and fantastically rested, but it’s the thick humidity in the air that has him sweating. He knows that humidity, from scattered pieces of an entire childhood of breathing that very same air. He knows he’s in New Orleans. He kicks off the covers off and finds that his body feels thick and leaden. He feels like he hasn’t had a drink in a decade and is delighted when he sees a pitcher of water next to his bed on the nightstand he picks it up and downs a quarter of it before putting it down. It’s quite warm. Will grimaces. That’s when he hears knocking on the door.    

“Come in.” He says. He really hopes its Hannibal, but he also hopes it isn’t. He hasn’t seen his face in the dream yet, and he doesn’t want it confirmed. He knows that he will have to find a away to reconcile the two, and keep them separate. If he can’t he’ll go crazier.   

He is surprised when a young woman, still almost a girl, who looks like she could have been next on the Minnesota Shrike’s agenda, with long dark hair wound about her crown, and wide blue eyes steps into his bedroom. Her mode of dress is the last straw. Will can no longer deny that he has left Kansas. 

A white-blue empire waisted gown clings to her body, leaving her tiny breasts and arms almost bare. Her neck is long and slender and her collar bones just beneath her young white skin, sharp as knives. Her porcelain skin is marred by a single sharp scar along her throat.    

“Hello.” Will says for lack of anything else to say, looking everywhere but at her nearly bare breasts. She is probably young enough to be his daughter.    

“How are you feeling?” She asks. She looks terrified of him. Will wonders why. He’s seen people look at him in all sorts of ways, sometimes discomfited and other times completely off put by his idiosyncrasies.  

He reaches for the pitcher of water and she flinches. Will decides its best to drop his hands entirely. He has hurt this child, though he cannot recall doing so.   

“Feeling?” He finally asks slowly.    

“Yes.” The girl looks like she’s walking on ice, and has already anticipated it snapping into pieces beneath her feet. “Mr Lecter said you got knocked on the head.”         

Will assumes he must have, then. He nods. He bites his lip. “And where is Dr...uh....Mr Lecter?” He says as he scratches his scalp. The girl seems to splutter. Tears fill her eyes.    

“Did he leave?”     

The girls scoffs. “If you were dying he would all but jump in the box after you.” And then immediately regrets it. Will watches her crumple in on herself. “He didn’t want me to tell you, because he knows you don’t like it. And he didn’t want to upset you in your condition.” 

Will only looks at her blankly, waiting for her to continue. He can’t even imagine what a man like Hannibal Lecter would do behind his back.   

“He’s fixing you something to break the fast, Master.” Says the girl and Will debates telling her to never call him Master again for a solid minute, before realizing what she had said.          

“He’s cooking for me?” Asks Will and the girl nods stiffly. Will feels something warm form in the very pit of his stomach. He feels those lips pressed against his forearm and knuckles. 

“That’s sweet.” He says before he can stop himself, a phrase he can never previously remember ever using, and the girl looks almost as shocked as he does. Will clears his throat. “I mean, uh, that’s below his station?”    

The girl’s mouth nearly hangs open. Will had not managed to save it at all. He looks from her small white breasts to the blue of her eyes to the doorknob helplessly.   

“Get me a newspaper!” He barks and the girl flees, borderline hysterical. She escapes Will’s bedroom and winds her way down the old wooden staircase in their apartments, down to the kitchen where she finds her only constant friend, a peculiar man named Hannibal Lecter. She watches as he cooks eggs on a hanging skillet over the hearth.     

“I don’t understand your fascination with servant work.” She says as she watches him poke at the  eggs with wooden spoon.   

"How is Will?” He asks and she rolls her eyes. Of course that is all Hannibal cares about.    

"He’s awake, but not himself.”    

“What do you mean, Abigail?” Asks Hannibal, his back stiff as he pokes at the eggs again and they sizzle.      

“He uhh....well Mr Lecter, he said you were sweet.”    

Hannibal drops the wooden spoon in the eggs, breaking their yolks. He lets out a curse.  

“He thinks its ‘sweet’ that you’re cooking for him.”   

“I...” Hannibal has stopped moving entirely. Abigail steps forward and puts a hand on his shoulder. He rests against her legs.    

“I didn’t believe it either.” She says and he lets out a breath as the eggs continue to sizzle. “Especially after how he reacted last time he caught--”      

“Abigail!” Hannibal admonishes. “That is your husband! And I will not tolerate--”   

“Yes, my husband he is all right.”  

Hannibal leans away from her, quickly removing all points of contact between them as he returns to his eggs.     

“It’s not like I want the bastard.” Says Abigail with a little smirk and Hannibal lets out a long sigh. “Can you fetch a plate, please?” He asks and Abigail lets out an exaggerated sigh, though returns from a china cupboard with a plate.      

“Thank you kindly darling.” Says the man as he takes the plate from her.  

“You better not burn them, senseless wench.” Abigail taps his lower back with the toe of her shoe   and Hannibal halfheartedly swats her away as he scrapes the eggs onto the plate. 

* * *

Up the stairs Will is startled by knocking, hoping it is either the girl with newspaper, or Hannibal himself with breakfast.  

“Come in.” He says. The knocking continues.   

“Come i--” It is then that Will snaps awake, in his dingy and small hotel room at the Holliday Inn, and brushes the sleep from his eyes as the knocking continues. The door of his room slides into focus and he shoots out of bed, wrapping a robe around himself as he stumbles toward the door.  He cracks it open to reveal Dr Hannibal Lecter. The man stands outside holding two cups, a thermos and a small thermal food storage bag.  

“Good morning, Will. May I come in?”   

Will is momentarily overcome by the feeling that nothing is real, or perhaps everything is real, and in and of itself these are two very similar problems.  

“Where’s Crawford?” Will feels a bit like a frightened child asking where his mother is in a supermarket, and forces himself to stand up marginally straighter. 

“Deposed in court. The adventure will be yours and mine today.”  

Will dislikes Hannibal’s definition of adventure immensely. Will doesn’t remember what they are supposed to do today, but he’s sure it involves talking to people.  

“May I come in?” 

Will desperately wants the man to leave, but he cannot remember how to say no. He steps aside, mechanically, and allows Hannibal entrance to his small room. He watches as the man sets down two tupperware containers full of what looks like eggs and sausage, and pours coffee into two cups he brought with him.  

“I’m very careful about what I put into my body.” Hannibal begins to explain as he sets the table. “Which means I end up preparing most meals myself.” He then gestures for Will to sit. “A little protein scramble to start the day. Some eggs, some sausage.” Hannibal looks pointedly from Will to the seat across from him and Will does not know how he feels about the fact that Hannibal will not sit until he is seated.   

Hannibal is polite, but it does not feel polite. Will feels violated. Nevertheless he sits and he takes a bite as the doctor sits across from him.  

Flavor veritably explodes across his tongue. It almost shocks him out of his state of discomfort. 

“It’s delicious.” He says almost flatly, as if not to betray his enjoyment. “Thank you.”    

“My pleasure.” Hannibal says, barely concealing a smile as he tucks into his own breakfast. “I would apologize for my analytical ambush but I know I will soon be apologizing again and you’ll tire of that eventually so I have to consider using apologies sparingly.” 

“Just keep it professional.” Will reminds him. He is already looking forward to never seeing this man again. 

“Or we could socialize like adults, god forbid we become friendly.” 

“I don’t find you that interesting.” Says Will and Hannibal knows the lie for what it is, but he cannot trace it to its root.  

“You will.” Hannibal says almost cheekily and waits for Will to continue their banter, and is only a little bit upset when he does not. “Agent Crawford tells me you have a knack for the monsters.” 

“That’s a superstition.” Will automatically corrects and Hannibal takes another bite of his scramble, almost in victory. There is something so refreshing about a person so desperate to prove him wrong. 

“I called your good friend Dr. Bloom about you. She wouldn’t gossip, not a word. She’s very 

protective of you, Will. Smitten, I would say. She asked me to keep an eye on you.”   

Hannibal knows he has struck a chord when Will puts down his fork and looks at him for a second, almost in the eye, as he entertains whether he wants to pursue this line of questioning or not. “I don’t think the Shrike killed that girl in the field.” He says eventually and Hannibal relents. 

“The devil is in the details. What didn’t your Copy Cat do to the girl in the field? What gave it away?”  

“Everything. It was like he had to give me a negative so I could see the positive. That crime scene was practically gift wrapped.” 

Hannibal would like to see the inside of Will’s mind. He has never felt so understood. 

“The mathematics of human behavior. All those ugly variables. Some bad math with this shrike fellow. Are you reconstructing his fantasies? What kind of problems does he have?”  

“He has a few.” Deflects Will, hiding behind a cup of coffee.   

“Ever have any problems, Will?” Hannibal says, and it is almost with a wink, and for a second Will is overcome by the hysterical notion that he could tell this man about the cat that comes and goes as it pleases, the haunting hallucinations and the dreams in which....   

The notion passes quickly. 

“No.” He insists.    

“Of course you don’t. You and I are just alike. Problem free. Nothing about us to feel horrible about.”       

Will wants to know what this man’s game is. 

“I think Uncle Jack sees you as a fragile little tea-cup, the finest china used for only special guests.”   

“How do you see me?” Will asks before he can stop himself and he grits his teeth. He does not need this man to pry into him any further than he already has. He doesn’t need him under skin. 

“The mongoose I want under the house when the snakes slither by.”   

Will finds himself oddly flattered by that. 

“Finish your breakfast.” Says Hannibal and Will finds himself complying without thinking about it. It is, after all, delicious. 

* * *

Will has driven them from his hotel room in a moderately banged up rental car to the first construction site. He has parked the car on the side of the road when he notices Hannibal smiling. It’s not an unpleasant site. When he is relaxed his general domineering air of hyper-control falls away.   

“What are you smiling about?” Asks Will, not unpleasantly and with genuine curiosity. 

“Peeking behind the curtain. Curious how the FBI goes about its business when it isn’t kicking in doors.”  

Will doesn’t return his smile, but he also doesn’t look entirely uncomfortable. “We’re lucky we’re not doing house to house interviews. “We found a little piece of metal in the clothes Elise Nichols had on. A shred from a pipe threader.” 

“Jack Crawford wants me to make sure you’re of sound mind and body... to look for metal pipethreaders?”    

Will can’t help but smile, though it looks unnatural and awkwardly stretched on his face. “That’s between you and Jack.” He says with a shrug. 

“There must be hundreds of construction sites all over Minnesota.” Hannibal thinks aloud as he gets out of the car. 

“Certain kinda metal. Certain kinda pipe. Certain kinda pipe coating. So we’re looking at construction sites that use that kinda pipe.” Will shuts his car door behind him.    

“And what are we looking for?” Asks Hannibal.  

“At this stage, anything really. But mostly anything peculiar.”     

Hannibal follows Will as he heads toward a camper trailer office.   

* * *

The secretary babbles ceaseless and suspiciously to her boss on the phone as Will and Hannibal go through the files in the office. She’s asking them question after question, which neither answer as Will suddenly stops with a look of mild epiphany on his face and a piece of paper in his hands. 

“Garret Jacob Hobbs.” He reads aloud. 

“One of our pipe threaders. Those are all the resignation letters. Plumbers union requires them whenever members finish a job.” Says the secretary before hanging up the phone.  

“Did Mr Hobbs have a daughter?” Asks Will. 

“He might have. I don’t know. I don’t keep company with these people.” Says the secretary icily and Hannibal turns his attention to Will. 

“What is it about Garret Jacob Hobbs you find so peculiar?” 

“Left a phone number. No address.” Says Will with a little shrug.   

“Therefore he has something to hide?” Asks Hannibal and will gives a vague gesture which roughly translates to ‘doubtful’.   

“Everyone else left an address. Do you have an address for Mr Hobbs?” Asks Will and the secretary takes her time procuring it for him. For this reason Will doesn’t feel so bad about making her help them haul boxes of files back the rental car. What he does not see is Hannibal purposefully knock a file box from the trunk and scatter its contents to the ground.    

Will assumes its the fault of the secretary, so when Hannibal bends as if to help, he shoos him away.   

“I got it.” Says Will. 

And with that as his queue Hannibal returns to the camper trailer office, looking at the Hobbs’ information, which the secretary had left by the phone, picks up the phone with his sleeve, and dials. 

* * *

In Bloomington Minnesota the Hobbs family is in the middle of making breakfast when the phone rings. It is Abigail Hobbs, pretty and fair with dark hair, a girl of eighteen, who answers the phone.  

“Hello...just a second.” She turns to face her father, Garrett Jacob Hobbs, who is currently washing his hands in the sink.    

“Dad. It’s for you.” She says brightly. 

“Who is it?” He asks as he presses the phone to his ear.  

“I don’t know. Caller I.D said it was blocked.” She hands her father the phone and he presses it to his ear. 

“Hello?”   

Hannibal speaks simply and clearly into the receiver. “Mister Garrett Jacob Hobbs?”     

“Yes?”  

“You don’t know me and I suspect we’ll never meet. This is a courtesy call. Listen very carefully. Are you listening?”  

“Yes.” And before Hannibal even says the words Garrett Jacob Hobbs knows what is coming and what he is going to have to do.   

“They know.” 

 

 

 

**ACT SIX**

 

Will Graham stands streaked with blood, his glasses splattered with it, his eyes sunken and far away as he gazes blankly into the middle distance. A circus of ambulances, paramedics, police cars, and officers stain midwestern suburbia with the virulence of the martian red spot, and Will sways in the midst of it, clinging to his rental car as a pendulum swings between his heart beat, spanning his mind and warping his surroundings steadily swiping them clean.  

Will pops an aspirin behind the wheel, seeming to cram every thought he’d usually have in a day into a thirty second span of time as he unbuckles his seat belt. Hannibal looks at him with a veiled excitement. Will figures he is living out some sort of boyish policeman fantasy.       

“I promise its nothing glamorous.” Says Will and Hannibal looks as bashful as his immovably stoic face allows, as if he’s been caught.       

“I shall be the judge of that.” Says Hannibal says with a pointed little glance as he gets out of the car and Will is momentarily stuck dumb by the thought that he might have just been flirted with. 

Before he has the chance to feel any which way about it he dismisses it. Bigger fish to fry than parsing out the expressions of the unreadable man, he tells himself. Bigger fish to catch before he can fry them, more like.    

He makes his way to the door awkwardly, running through what he’s even going to say in head over and over and mangling it beyond recognition. Hannibal lags behind and Will is about to tell him that it would be alright if he comes closer when suddenly, bleeding and wheezing, Louise Hobbs, Garrett Jacob Hobbs’ wife, is shoved down the porch steps in a heap, the door slamming shut behind her. 

Hot blood pours from the wounds in her arms and torso as she lays on the porch. Will rushes to her and she clutches at his streaking him with her blood as she shakes and moans. He knows that she is already dead. Her body is barely warm. Will is forced to ignore her pleading terrified eyes as he extricates himself from her grasp. She lets out a final moan as he brushes away her hand and it falls to the ground.     

He takes to the locked door, slamming against it with a sickening crack which might be the door and might just be the bones in his shoulder grinding against unyielding wood. He kicks down the door, splintering the door little by little with kick after kick until he can frantically stumble inside.  

* * *

Hannibal, with the studied precision of a model on the catwalk, follows Will inside, barely glancing at the corpse of Louise Hobbs as he steps deliberately. He pauses in the broken doorway, listening closely.     

“Garrett Jacob Hobbs? FBI!” He hears Will call again and again as he wildly works his way from  room to room, gun first.   

Out of the corners of his eyes some part of Will recognizes the blood staining the walls and floor,  but he will not process it fully until later, when adrenaline is not coursing through his veins. He stops dead as he comes to the kitchen. 

He sees Garrett Jacob Hobbs with his hands wrapped around his daughter and a knife, caging her body to his. His eyes pierce Will’s. He looks at him, judges him not to be a threat, and begins to slice his daughter’s throat open in the span of a second.  

These are the last mistakes of Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Will fires into the man’s exposed upper chest. Again. 

And again. 

And again.  

Until the man falls in a bloody heap in the corner, propped up by two cabinets. Hannibal steps into kitchen, is glacial expression turning to pity as he watches Will scoop Abigail into his lap and attempt to hold the gash in her throat together with only the pressure of his hands, blood flowing through his fingers like water. Her windpipe has been slashed. She wheezes pathetically.    

“Open your eyes.”    

The crack in Will’s neck is audible as his head swivels toward Garrett Jacob Hobbs.      

“Open your eyes!” The man repeats with a snarl and Will shuts down entirely. His glazed eyes fluttering as he heaves painful breaths, his chest heaving.    

Hannibal, curious as to the meaning of this exchange and Will’s reaction, puts it aside and pushes him off of Abigail, taking over before Will’s well-meant application of quaking hands contributes to the child’s death.             

As Hannibal holds her throat together Abigail watches her father’s die, and then turns her eyes to Will as Hannibal works. 

Will returns her gaze, even as his body shakes uncontrollably. 

* * *

Sticky with dried blood, Will leans against his rental car, barely in the eye of the storm. He watches as paramedics wheel Abigail into the back of an ambulance. His eyes briefly connect on all of the points where Hannibal’s darker, larger hand is wrapped around her pallid and limp one. Will watches as he crawls into the ambulance beside her, they share a glance as the doors swing shut. 

It is only as they drive away that it hits Will that he knows her face. 

He thinks of the thin scar marring the slender white neck of the woman in his dream, dressed in blue, breasts almost bared entirely by her gown. 

Will swallows and collapses beside his car. He remains huddled there for hours. 

* * *

 Jack Crawford should not be surprised the following day upon finding Dr. Alana Bloom teaching Will’s class for him, but he is. 

 He knocks on the door frame to get her attention, and she crosses to the door, only opening it a begrudging crack.  

 "Where’s Graham?” He asks and Alana Bloom clearly has a thousand things she would like to say to him, none of which are complimentary. 

“You said he wouldn’t get too close.” She settles on. She then quietly shuts the door in his face before he can respond.      

* * *

Will appears flattened to almost nothing beneath the glare of hospital fluorescents. He passes hospital security and turns a corner, into Abigail Hobbs’ hospital room.  

His eyes roam the tubes and machines keeping the girl alive, and follow the darker hand wrapped around hers, to a wiry forearm, to the body and sleep-softened face of Dr Hannibal Lecter. Will lets out a single silent gasping sob as he sits beside the Doctor. The feeling that something has fallen into place terrifies and elates him. Will feels as if he’s being pressed flat against the earth by a large brick. He watches Hannibal, even in sleep offering comfort to the girl they saved together.     

He remarks at the apparent guilelessness of a man he thought to be little more than a shark, whose touch he already knows, and feels his ribs crack inside him and his heart pound painfully against his newly jagged points as he lets his head fall into his hands. 

It feels natural to sit beside Hannibal. Will feels a stillness slide into place, his endless barrage of questions dissipating under the weight of his fatigue.  

Will is tired.  


End file.
